Intel Alder Lake-S Core-1800 ES specs leak: 16C/24T with 4.6 GHz boost on two big cores, 3.4 GHz boost on four small cores, and extremely short 228 W PL2

Alder Lake is Intel's upcoming processor family, which is said to sport a hybrid core architecture that the company first experimented with Lakefield. So far, we have seen several instances of a 16-core Alder Lake processor in the wild. Now, Igor'sLAB has managed to source some technical information pertaining to what is being referred to as an Intel Core-1800 chip.

The Intel Core-1800 looks to be an engineering sample (ES), given its low base frequency of 1.8 GHz and early B0 stepping. The datasheet indicates the 16-core 24-thread processor to have eight Atom efficiency cores (which would be Gracemont cores without hyperthreading) and eight performance cores (Golden Cove with hyperthreading).

Also being indicated is that the Core-1800 ES has a PL1 (TDP) of 125 W that lasts for 56 seconds. The short-burst PL2 goes up to 228 W and lasts for just 2.44 ms. The PL2 value in this engineering sample is quite intriguing. It looks to be somewhat lower than the 251 W PL2 seen in Rocket Lake 8-core while also being of an extremely short duration. Both Rocket Lake 8-core and Comet Lake 10-core have a PL2 Tau that can last for up to 56 seconds. It is quite possible that this Core-1800 engineering sample cannot sustain the boost clock for long.

In any case, motherboard manufacturers often override Intel's PL2 and Tau values, so it will be interesting to see how well Alder Lake sustains boost. Also, we are hearing that Alder Lake will not be supporting the power-guzzling AVX-512 instruction set. This is understandable considering the platform is a heterogeneous architecture, which means supporting different ISAs simultaneously for both CPU clusters may not be possible given potential issues with proper scheduling.

Apart from the power values, the datasheet also shows the turbo ratio limits for the Golden Coves and Gracemont cores at a 1.3147 V voltage. At this voltage, the big Golden Cove cores can attain:

• 4.6 GHz on 1-2 cores
• 4.4 GHz on 3-4 cores
• 4.2 GHz on 5-6 cores
• 4 GHz on all 8 cores

The Gracemont Atom cores, on the other hand, can reach:

• 3.4 GHz on 1-4 cores
• 3 GHz on all 8 cores

Alder Lake can support DDR5-4800 memory but only when paired with high-end Z690 chipset boards, which can also support DDR4-3200. Other 600-series chipset boards will offer only DDR4-3200 support. This makes sense considering that there's still some uncertainty regarding mass production of DDR5 memory.

Alder Lake will also be the first mainstream desktop platform to support PCIe Gen5 with the CPU offering a total of 20 PCIe lanes (16 Gen5 + 4 Gen4). The PCH will offer another 28 PCIe lanes (16 Gen4 + 12 Gen3).

Intel hasn't given an exact timeline for Alder Lake's launch, but we expect an announcement sometime in September. Speculations currently point to anywhere between 20% and 25% IPC improvements for the Golden Cove cores over Willow Cove.

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